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Author
Topic: No more beer.... (Read 7627 times)

For those of us with testosterone issues and love beer, I have bad news!The hops in beer have estrogenic effects on men and lower our testosterone levels.If you read the article below, they used to use gruit instead of hops but the church stopped it as people felt too good!

After reading this article we will no longer drink hops but will be looking for gruit beer!!!

Cheers,Hover and Dr. T.

To understand why hops replaced gruit it is important keep in mind the properties of gruit ale: it is highly intoxicating and aphrodisiacal when consumed in sufficient quantity. Gruit ale stimulates the mind, creates euphoria and enhances sexual drive. Hopped ale is quite different. Contemporary scientific research has conclusively demonstrated that hops contains large quantities of estrogenic and soporific compounds. In fact hops has been used for many thousands of years in traditional medical practice as a natural estrogen replacement therapy and to help insomniacs sleep. The high level of plant estrogens in hops makes hopped beer an extremely good drink for women in menopause but also makes it a very bad drink for men. Consumption by men of large levels of estrogenic compounds can lead to erection problems later in life. In fact, there is a well-known condition in England called Brewer's Droop which is regularly contracted by bartenders and brewers after years of exposure to hopped beers and ales.http://www.gruitale.com/art_fall_of_gruit.htm

Thank goodness gin is free of hops and gluten.It is also cheap. Fewer calories and gets the job done.

Did you read in the article where it states that men who are exposed to hops for too long a time get erectile problems?Oh for the days of gruit, euphoric and horny with a working dick!Maybe making gruit beer will be my next project when we get back home.

I was shocked to find that MOST beers do not list their ingredients!Maybe they think we are smart enough to know what is in them without listing...

While trapped here in Palm Springs, we looked at all the beers at Trader Joe's but found nothing.It appears we will need to find the grit beer on the net or learn to make it ourselves.My partner found some being sold in Europe, but that is a bit too far to go for a drink.

Leave it to the churches to get rid of something fun and replace it with something neutering to men.If it feels good it is a sin!

At the cost of it, I don't think I will have to worry about consuming too much.

HUGS,

Mark

Mark ANY KIND of Beer now makes me SICK, I use to be able to drink it when I was a lot youngermy Renal Doctor says Beer & Soda is a big fat no no for me, but Wine won't hurt me * White Zinfandelor Red Wine go's down a lot better anyway, I always have that handy, and a glass go's well with Dinner

« Last Edit: November 30, 2010, 11:06:49 AM by denb45 »

Logged

"it's so nice to be insane, cause no-one ask you to explain" Helen Reddy cc 1974

I recently started drinking beer again after about a 7 year holiday and finally have gained 5 pounds that I could never seem to gain. I didn't stop drinking because of being an alcoholic I was worried about the toll of meds and booze on my liver. Since we only live once and my love for beer I recently started to enjoy a beer or 3 a few nights a week with my dinner and thank God I can finally gain some weight!

Antibody, We are on testosterone replacement and do worry!We got the implants and must keep the estrogen levels down on a daily basis.At night we take progesterone and plenty of saw palmetto to keep the testosterone from converting to estrogen.Staying away from soy is also a good idea to protect your testosterone levels.

soy does not decrease testosterone or increase estrogen levels. that is a myth.

Hi,

If either of you could point out some evidence for or against soy, I'd really appreciate it. I've read all the anti-soy literature from the Weston Price group, and some counter-arguments, and often wonder how much truth there is in it.

For the record, nobody claims that there is anything wrong with fermented soy as in miso, natto, or soy sauce. It is unfermented soy as in tofu or soy milk that is said to be the culprit. I eat the small to moderate amounts of tofu that occur in a normal Japanese diet and don't worry about it, nor do I eschew the occasional soy milk. (There is a vegan chocolate shop here in New York that makes a fantastic spicy hot chocolate with soy milk, and while I would prefer real milk I certainly don't pass them by when I happen to be in the neighborhood!) But the massive amounts of soy eaten by some vegetarians would be a big issue if the anti-soy arguments are true.

Jessica Prentice's Full Moon Feast has a whole chapter on traditional ales that you might find interesting. Here is the paragraph that most directly refers to the topic on hand:

Quote

"There is a five-hundred-year-old German law--the Reinheitsgebot--that regulates the ingredients in beer and permits only four: water, barley, hops, and yeast. Nothing else can legally be called beer in Germany. The Reinheitsgebot was at least partly the result of a hot fight between advocates for hopped ale and advocates for the (then more traditional) gruit ales made from herbs such as marsh rosemary, bog myrtle, yarrow, wormwood, and sage. For many centuries ales had been brewed by women in small quantities from the herbs in the their wortyards. The ales had a wide range of properties--medicinal, stimulating, ceremonial, culinary--depending on which worts had been used in their brewing. The beer purity laws enacted in the sixteenth century in both England and Germany paved the way for the consolidation of beer brewing into the hands of a few commercial producers that would eventually put the local, artisinal, small-scale productions of the alewife out of business."

Actually, reading the article I see nothing of the kind. For one thing, it says that:

Quote

"But for most of European history gruit (or sometimes grut) was what beer was. If you went into a pub in the middle ages in most of continental Europe you would have been served gruit. Hopped beers came much later, gaining dominance about 1750 A.D."

In other words, gruit beer seems to have flourished during the centuries of the Church's maximum power and influence, and to have been eclipsed by hops during those of the Church's decline. Then:

Quote

"Hops, when it began to be suggested for use as a primary additive to beer, was bitterly resisted...In Germany, as beer historian John Arnold comments: "Hopped beers, not alone their manufacture but also their importation into the domains of the Archbishop of Cologne, were strictly prohibited in various edicts, and infractions threatened with severe penalties. The reason for this was two-fold. First, the manufacture of gruit was a privilege, exploited or granted by the archbishop and bishops, hence a source of large revenue for them, a veritable ecclesiastical monopoly. Second, "gruit" contained herbs and spices, meeting the taste of that time (and of succeeding centuries), its composition being a mystery for the common people, and in any event a trade secret for the privileged manufacturer. This privilege was now threatened in the highest degree by the hops and hopped beers which began to appear from different localities." (6) . . . "How determinedly the archbishops for the reasons mentioned opposed the introduction of hopped beers [can be seen] from a decree issued, April 17, 1381, by Archbishop Frederick of Cologne, in behalf of the maintenance of the gruit monopoly, according to which not only the brewers, but also the clergy, the military and the civilians, in fact, anybody who wanted to brew beer were commanded to buy their gruit in the episcopal gruit-houses; furthermore, the importation of 'hopped beer' from Westphalia was prohibited, and so was the brewing of such beers in Cologne itself, under pain of the severest penalties which the Church could inflict." (7)

So there was at least one place in which it was hops, not gruit, that the church sought to ban: the church was making and protecting gruit.

The article goes on to associate hops and the decline of gruit with Protestantism, although the wikipedia article on the subject calls that idea into question.

I see absolutely nothing, anywhere, about the church stopping it "because people felt too good".

To the larger question of hops, I can only state that I became interested in beer only very recently. In college I associate beer with the weak lagers that I hated and avoided it for the next decade, but not long ago, travelling in Quebec, I discovered a very active micro-brewery culture and happily sampled a whole series of dark, intense, interesting beers, ales, and stouts. I suppose most of them were hopped, although I remember one very interesting ale made with dandelion (leaves, flowers, or both, one wonders?) and honey. Anyway, I can certify that if hops decrease sexual appetite it must be a long-term, not an immediate effect, because I saw no such effect during that particular month!

I gave up beer as I was drinking too much and possibility of being stopped guys warned me a DUI was VERY expensive. But also, i was getting really wet sneezes over and over, I'd become allergic. I've switched to whiskey and water, that's my mom's drink. I like the tart taste.

As I understand it the ancient gruel type beer that started in Egypt thru dark ages was like an oatmeal bubbling and fermenting away. Then they started separating it into clear ales and feeding the whey to animals.